The Uighur community have long suffered oppression and discrimination, and Thailand’s request to apprehend and return Uighurs who might have entered Malaysia is a timely reminder that we need a just and compassionate refugee policy.

Sitting shotgun in a beat-up vehicle en route to Tashkorgan a small town in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang, I soaked in the magnificence—or what I could see through the dust-coated windshield.